You Only Live Once

For many years I lived in a valley which sat at about 4,000 feet. The winters were always long, always dark, and while it rained a fair amount in the winter, sometimes you'd wake up, and it would be white as far as the eye could see. And every now and then when it snowed, it would snow enough that you could do something crazy, like ski on it.

And one particular winter day, we woke up and saw there was enough snow to get out and do some sort of ski. My husband had some scaled AT skis, and I had tele skis and skins. We decided, YOLO, let's do a short (about eight miles) loop around half the valley. We ran the route all the time. It was flat. It was chill. The weather was nice. It would be fun.

So we set off from our front yard, reveling in the glorious winter day, the cliff walls high, the ground all white and fluffy. We had to cross several roads, but the snow was thick enough the asphalt was buried. Within the first half mile we had to ski over a bridge, forcing us to ski up the stone steps that put you on the actual bridge, and then down the steps on the other side. I had ridden horses up and down the same stone steps, and while once I had a horse balk so hard we ended up fording the river (and filling my boots with water) it was probably harder to not face plant on teles in free pivot mode than it was to not get thrown off a horse in the same spot.

Once we were on the trail proper, we left the world behind. We saw no one. The woods had that heavy, quiet pressure that comes with thick snow, and we were having fun. Or at least I assume we were. What I really remember about that part of our ski, when I think back on it, is that we were really, really, far from finishing.

About an hour or so into our journey, the snow on the trail disappeared. This was because several creeks now ran over the trail. To continue, we had to cross several flooded areas. In our skis, we picked over slick rocks and sloshed through the flowing water. Once back on the snow, my skins froze, thereby making the snow clump to the bottom of my skis, and my skis, which were not a light setup to start with, became actual foot anchors. They suddenly weighed a ton.

By then, we were working pretty hard. We stripped down to our T-shirts and continued on. I slogged forward, despite my frozen skis, and eventually, we made it to the part of the trail that crossed the road.

"Just under halfway," my husband said.

We had paused at the road crossing. I was peering at my skis. They were so heavy. A black beater truck drove by. It was Ed, one of our neighbors. We waved and he hit the brakes, coming to a stop on the road next to us.

He cranked down his window. (Yes, the truck was old enough to have crank windows.)

"Jesus. Are you two in trouble? You need a ride? You look terrible," Ed said.

This was unexpected. Ed was a pretty self-sufficient guy who applied those principles to how other people should act. The fact he had stopped suggested we looked worse than I realized.

"We're on a mission," I said. "We're skiing a short loop."

Ed, no physical slouch, looked at me like I was actually insane.

"But, you... You look like you aren't going to make it."

"We're like ten feet from the road at all times," my husband said. "We can't not make it."

Ed did not look convinced.

"Call me if you need a ride. I'll come get you," he said.

"We're fine," my husband said.

Ed shook his head, rolled up his window, and drove away.

"We might look real bad," I said.

My husband just shrugged.

A few hours later, we were still skiing. The trail had not gotten easier, my skis only had only gotten heavier, and while the valley was still stunningly beautiful, we had eaten most of our snacks. We had cooled off significantly too, and we'd layered back up. It wasn't getting close to dark, but the adventure had taken a lot longer than we'd expected.

"Funny how much faster we run this," my husband said.

While everything was fine, albeit protracted, funny wasn't the word I would have chosen.

Finally, the trees opened up, and we found ourselves in a tucked away meadow less than a mile from our house. We were so close, but by then we were out of food. At this point, I was moving my legs because there was no other option, but what I really wanted was to be eating a cheeseburger while lying down.

We slogged through meadow. It was stupidly gorgeous, but I had no calories in my body so I didn't care. My skis had been steadily pulling my legs off for most of the day, and I was soaking wet, from sweat, from snow, from stream crossings. I smelled. I was tired. I ached. The silver lining, apart from how mind numbingly pretty it was, was that I was not at all scared. I simply had to keep moving, which would make it so that, at some unknown point in the future, I would no longer be wet and hungry.

"Look," my husband said, stopping. "A person."

I stared across the meadow. A lone figure approached us. They wore a wide brimmed felt hat, had snow shoes strapped to their feet, and their crisp, plaid jacket complemented the bright, white snow. Their pants were dry and unstained and their snow boots looked like they'd just been taken out of the box. I could practically smell the new rubber. Frankly, they looked like they'd just stepped out of an L.L. Bean catalogue.

My husband and I... We wore a mishmash of layers, all of which had holes in them and were of various clashing shades. My hair was wasp's nest. My husband wore a hat that had what looked like blood streaking down the sides, a result of having rusted out the button while fishing in coastal flats. No one would accuse us of walking out of a catalogue for anything. In fact, the only thing we'd been accused of that day was being so bedraggled we needed a ride, and that had been hours ago. We, no doubt, looked far worse now.

We watched the person, now close enough to identify as a male, float in his snowshoes across the meadow.

"That guy looks so perfect he doesn't look real," I said, flopping onto my side in the snow. What was more moisture at this point anyway? "I wish he was coming to give us food."

"That guy..." my husband started. "That guy is Will."

I sat up. It was Will, another of our friends. He looked like Indiana Jones in that hat, if Indiana Jones had to trek across a meadow of snow. Will got close enough to us to realize who we were.

"Whoa," he said. "What happened to you two?"

We told him what we'd done, and we ended by telling him we had run out of snacks.

"Well luckily for you, I came prepared."

Will was always prepared. Sometimes this caused him to be, in my opinion, overprepared, but sometimes my opinion of what overprepared meant meant I was actually underprepared. Case in point, me lying in the snow visualizing food products even though I was less than a mile from my refrigerator.

Will pulled out several, I shit you not, Trader Joe's snacks. The nearest Trader Joe's was several hours away. And, he shared them with us.

Turned out, Will was not overprepared. I was underprepared, and Will was a really nice friend.

Once Will had plied us with snacks, he wished us luck on making it home, and we set off on the homestretch. We made it to the other side of the meadow, crossed the road, took the shortcut through the ball field at the school, then skirted edge of the yard of a guy who didn't exactly like us, before finally making it to our little house.

We had made it home. We'd left thinking we'd be gone a few hours, but in reality, it had taken us most of the day. We were hungry (although not as hungry as we could have been, thanks Will!), tired, and sore. We'd YOLO'd it and gone on an adventure, and while the stakes had been low, we'd gotten more than we'd expected.

But that's the price of the YOLO. Sometimes you win big, and sometimes your friends find you wallowing in the snow and feeds you salty snacks out of the goodness of his heart. You never really know with the YOLO until you're soaking wet and out of food.

So here's to the YOLO, and here's to friends who share their food.